This invention relates to the improvement of baled animal feed material.
In recent years techniques have become available for wrapping a cylindrical bale with plastics material so as to maintain that bale against deterioration by weather effects. The wrapping process has taken various techniques including bagging and wrapping of the bale with a strip material. These techniques are achieving some success but at present the techniques and machinery available is relatively simple and crude merely providing a machine for the actual wrapping with other processing and handling of the bale being carried out by conventional techniques in an unsatisfactory manner.
One example of a machine of this type is disclosed in British patent application No. 2159489 (Eight Milieu). A further example is shown in European Publication No. 0110110. Both of these devices are concerned merely with wrapping the bale and use a technique in which the bale is gradually rotated about its axis while it is also wrapped in a direction parallel to the axis or in the plane of the axis so that the strip of wrapping material extends around the ends of the bale.
This general technique was initially disclosed in relation to cylindrical objects of a different nature in U.S. Pat. No. 1,654,258.
Further devices of this general type are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,569,439, 4,409,784, 4,407,113, 4,343,132, and 4,296,595. Yet further devices are shown in Canadian Pat. No. 1086630 and German patent application Nos. 2705101 and 3311279.
A device for the injection of lye, for example ammonia, into a bale through a hollow spike mounted on a bale carrier from a tank carried by the tractor is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,450,178. This patent therefore suggests that a wrapped bale during its transportation can be injected by a spike which is carried by the transportation mechanism. This is, however, a highly unsatisfactory procedure and has not met with any commercial success.